Futurist Forensics: Indigenous Evidence, Cosmo-Epistemologies, and the New Red Order

Smith, Patrick Brian

Abstract

This article critically engages with the emerging ‘media forensic’ turn at the intersection of visual culture, new media practice, and humanitarian and political activism. This field purports to subvert dominant forensic and surveillant regimes, weaponising these mediated modalities to document acts of humanitarian and political violence. Such practices have been widely celebrated for enhancing forms of legal and political accountability and justice. However, there are concerns that these practices may inadvertently mirror the state-sanctioned regimes of control and power they wish to expose, reinforcing settler-colonial histories of the forensic and evidentiary, whilst also excluding counter-hegemonic and experimental modes of emergent media investigation. To address these limitations, this article proposes a radical counter-history and praxis of the forensic, drawing on Indigenous epistemologies and critical decolonial thought. Analysing the work of the Indigenous media collective the New Red Order (NRO), the article argues that their ongoing Culture Capture project (2017-) exemplifies a counter-hegemonic mode of emergent media forensic practice. By asserting Indigenous epistemological agency over such modes of media investigation, the NRO challenge Western forensic practices’ hegemony. The article advocates for expanding the scope of media forensic work to include diverse publics, communities, and aesthetic-political practices that offer subversive, decolonial forms of evidentiary practice.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 15, 2024
• Deposit Date: Feb 3, 2025
• Journal: Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 14
• Issue: 1
• Publisher URL: https://csalateral.org/archive/